One step closer to the grave for PETA part II-‘If PETA ruled the world!’Leave a comment

Imagine a world without pets or companion animals as Ingrid Newkirk insists on calling them. A core of people in the PETA organisation are aiming for this. Their desire is that animals never be chained, caged, eaten, experimented on, worn or used for entertainment. They are hard at work campaigning for the outlawing of zoos and circuses too.

An example of this is their campaigning with some success in some states of America to ban pitbull terriers. It is just the start of PETA’s efforts to systematically destroy the rights of American citizens to eat meat and animal products, own pets, hunt, fish, breed animals and view them at zoos and wildlife reserves. One day America, in the future, the world!

Peta at times like to quote Adolf Hitler as a man who was a champion for animal rights. In doing so, are they implying that their view of animal rights and humans is similar to the Nazis, since we know what the Nazis did to the Jews? Six million of them were brutally euthanised in Hitler’s concentration camps. Funny how PETA used those holocaust concentration images to highlight their total revulsion with factory farming. PETA in the end were forced to apologise to current day Jews, but used the lame excuse that Jewish people in PETA instigated and dreamed up the comparison of the Holocaust murdering of Jews with current day factory farming!

Don’t get me wrong, I am in favour of better conditions for the likes of chickens and pigs. Progress is being made around the world. I would like to see it happen faster. For instance, I’d prefer to see free range chicken farming for both eggs and meat. Perhaps governments need to take these issues even more seriously and subsidise both free range eggs, pig and poultry meat.

So what are the figures for PETA’s Norfolk Virginia headquarters with respect to animals adopted out? In 2012 only 10.8 percent of the pets taken in by PETA at their headquarters in Norfolk Virginia escaped the syringe and hypodermic needle; 94.1 percent of the cats and 82.1 percent of the dogs ended up in Ingrid’s walk-in freezer!

A total of 1,675 cats, dogs, and “other companion animals” are listed in the column headed “Euthanised.” Plus 72 unlucky wild animals.

Now Ingrid recently placed her ‘spin’ on these figures, saying that they only take in really bad cases and others go on to other animal shelters set up for adoption. I realise that some animals are suffering in a major way with bad facial cancers that may’ve eaten a good chunk of a dog or cats face away, but surely not all these animals euthanised needed to be, surely not!

I have written in a couple of previous articles on PETA that perhaps they could help adopt out surplus racing pigeons around the world. In the back of my mind and maybe yours too if you love animals, would be the thought, “Are they still alive”. Nathan Winograd whom PETA don’t particularly like has written about this type of situation in-depth. Google his name and you’ll find quite easily what I am talking about.

If PETA ruled the world there’d be laws forbidding the eating of animal products. Animal breeds once used for humankind’s nutrition would be phased out. How they would do this the mind boggles, but I have a brief vision of many ‘vans of death’, sorry, ‘trucks of death’ to cart off the animals which PETA wouldn’t be able to find a home that they deemed suitable for, regardless of the health and age of the animal.

The alternative, which is releasing all the farmed chickens, pigs, sheep, cows and goats e.t.c. into the wild, is a somewhat daunting one and hence the need perhaps for those ‘trucks of death’ which come to mind when I contemplate, if PETA did rule the world! Would this really happen if PETA ruled the world, well it’s certainly on the cards!

There is nothing wrong with PETA being a champion for animals and their rights, but sometimes I have another vision of what they might be really up to and it reminds me of ancient cultures such as the Babylonians, the Egyptians and in parts of the world today, where animals are still adored, worshiped and deified, even rats! Animal worship!

PETA seemed to have rejected their own species, humans, the alpha species in today’s natural world and usurped humans with animals, even fish, which they’ve suggested we call sea kittens! Yes, a hook would hurt in the fish’s mouth, but humankind has been catching fish with hooks for eons. A simple bang on the fishes head is a very humane way to kill the fish once landed.

How does all this relate to racing pigeons, since that is what you’ve come to this site to read up on and be stimulated by? If you haven’t read the previous two articles on PETA then please do so, they are below. The more recent condensed version is the one available for public publishing in newspapers, pigeon magazines and the like, if you’d like to request it from me.

In brief, PETA have declared war on pigeon racing worldwide. Although they’re seen as a ‘bunch of crackpots’ by most in this world, we shouldn’t take them lightly. Hitler comes to mind here, how Chamberlain tried to appease him and we all know what happened there. Therefore we must all unite under the common umbrella of this great hobby and past time which humankind has practiced for centuries. Many civilisations have benefited from the pigeons’ homing skills for eons e.g. the Romans and Genghis Khans use of carrier pigeons as winged messengers. In fact the Greeks used them to proclaim the winner of the Olympics and further back still, they were used as messengers between outposts in ancient Egypt.

What do I see as the future for the organisation PETA? Well one thing’s for sure, they’re not going to meet their demise in the near future. I guess I could see them lasting perhaps another couple of decades. Hopefully other animal rights groups will rise up and become a stronger and more credible voice than PETA’s. Hopefully they will attain a balance that is lacking in PETA!

There already exists around the world a whole myriad of animal welfare organisations which provide checks and balances for PETA currently. These are the ones that we should support financially and by our voluntary time.

Don’t get me wrong, PETA has achieved some great things such as reducing the experimentation on animals is one area that comes to mind, whether it be cosmetics or human drugs. In fact PETA, founded in 1980 by Newkirk and Pacheco was clearly established as an internationally known organisation in 1981 when they exposed some nasty experiments in a Maryland facility involving Silver Spring monkeys. Although the State investigation took ten years, it resulted in prosecutions, the facility was closed down and an amendment in 1985 to America’s Animal Welfare Act was made.

Another great achievement by PETA was exposing the cruel and degrading practices in the Thai elephant industry e.g. the use of iron rods and hooks on the elephants to break their spirit. The caging of bears for the milking of their bile salts is another issue which PETA has campaigned hard against with some success. The Pentagon stopping shooting pigs and goats in wounds tests, another achievement I rate highly.

These are just four examples of the good things which PETA have done, really good things. However PETA uses controversial protest techniques and billboard campaigns, at times to their detriment. Using the female body to get its message across, including the use of porn stars is hardly a gratifying way to win the support of women in this world, especially given that in some countries women are still second class citizens. Sex sells PETA says, a pity though, that they don’t use more images of animals in their campaigns rather than us humans.

If things are really so bad in farming around the world then surely just providing the clear, cold facts graphically is as convincing as anything. Otherwise PETA are simply seen as exploiting and degrading women. However if PETA are right and animals are superior to us, then in their minds the abuse of women in their ads is justified! So too I’d assume in PETA’s minds were their posters of a child eating meat with the slogan ‘feeding kids meat is child abuse’. Given the rampant child abuse around the world I’m sure there’d be many that would find that offensive!

I also wonder how much PETA pay people like Sir Paul McCartney and a whole raft of women celebrities to do ads for them. It has been said that PETA have made the mistake of confusing attention for approval, and controversy with actually being right. Sometimes I just can’t help seeing PETA as the spoilt little child who’s craving for everyone’s attention. The media surely will give it freely and Ingrid has said in the past re the media, that “PETA have a duty to be press sluts” and admit openly on their website that they use provocative imagery to get attention. In their eyes, the gain for animals is worth the pain for women, abused children, and holocaust victims’ e.t.c. Incredible isn’t it? I guess one might surmise that their perceived reality differs from many of us.

PETA seem to concentrate a lot on getting the vegan message out there. If they want to be vegan and not enjoy the nutritional benefits of animal products i.e. meat, eggs, milk and other dairy products and fish, then that’s their choice. Humans are the alpha species and traditionally we are ‘hunter gatherers’, our bodies have actually evolved to eat these products, perhaps not in the amounts that some people eat, but for most people eating these things are normal, totally moral and totally health benefiting! So I’m afraid that PETA are just a little wrong on this one! Oh well, you can’t win them all PETA! Besides, humans are not the only species which eat meat in this world!

Finally, we ask the question, “How could PETA affect pigeon racing worldwide?” From my research the organisation including Ingrid are quite happy to attempt to slowly but surely change the face of factory farming in America by actually working with some of the big companies. In other words they are prepared to lower their temporal expectations in exchange for gradual change. This has earned them staunch criticism from those outside of PETA who label PETA ‘The new Welfarists’ and they see them as copping out and not being true ‘Animal Rights Activists’.

Unfortunately for PETA, with respect to racing pigeons both in America and the U.K., PETA has taken an ‘in your face’ approach and personally I’d be surprised if any organisation anywhere in the world connected to racing pigeons would be willing to work with PETA given for example the lies and deceit in the PETA Graveyard Races U.K. video. Further, their attempts to catch the media wave and stir up anti pigeon racing sentiment for example with the recent Chinese bird flu outbreak. In this case they’re appealing to U.K. authorities to postpone Channel racing. This is viewed by many in the public arena and us pigeon fanciers as being another opportunistic move by PETA. Remember, China is many thousands of miles away from the U.K. It will have to spread to closer countries and anyway, don’t a truckload of wild birds cross the Channel on a regular basis? There’s that word ‘truck’ again!

This smacks to me of pride and our role as fellow fanciers is to get informed about them. Expose their soft underbelly e.g. their high kill rates in their Virginia shelter and the terrible way they twist things. Also be very wary that whatever you might say to fellow fliers might be taped and filmed by probably a well meaning person attempting a sting on pigeon racing, but the problem here is, like the devil himself, PETA mixes a little bit of fact, with a big dose of beguiling lies. Perhaps the devil has infiltrated PETA big time? That would make sense, as I do kinda see them as a quasi-religious group, even if I agree with some of their policies and applaud some of their victories!